Oregon Parks and Recreation Department
government agency
The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD), officially known (in state law) as the State Parks and Recreation Department, is the government agency of the U.S. state of Oregon which operates its system of state parks. In addition, it has programs to protect and provide public access to natural and historic resources within the state, including the State Historic Preservation Office, Oregon Heritage Commission, Oregon Commission on Historic Cemeteries, recreation trails, the Ocean Shores Recreation Area, scenic waterways and the Willamette River Greenway. The department's chief sources of funding are the Oregon Lottery, state park user fees. and recreation vehicle license fees. The department also manages the system of rest areas along the highways and freeways within the state. In 2006 the department was delegated responsibility for managing the Oregon State Fair.
The department was created in 1921 as a branch of the Oregon Highway Department (predecessor to the present-day Oregon Department of Transportation). The 1989 Oregon Legislative Assembly transferred authority to a newly created department under its current name effective January 1, 1990.
In the 2019 fiscal year, Oregon state parks attracted 55 million visitors, a 1.3 percent increase from the previous fiscal year. For the 2010 fiscal year, Oregon ranked first among U.S. states in state park capacity utilization rate, indicating that Oregon's state parks were the most overused.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Oregon Parks and Recreation Department” is government agency. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Oregon, Parks and Recreation, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “government agency” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7101287. VIAF identifies the subject as 158411467. The Library of Congress control number is n91060461. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 1921, 1989 and 1990.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Oregon Parks and Recreation Department”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Oregon Parks and Recreation Department primary sources, Oregon Parks and Recreation Department archive and Oregon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Oregon Parks and Recreation Department”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Oregon Parks and Recreation Department” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.